David Morawetz

Morawetz Social Justice Fund

David Morawetz is an economist, a psychologist, a counsellor, a philanthropist, and a supporter of Students Partnership Worldwide.

Several years ago, David inherited a substantial amount of money from his remarkable father who built his fortune after coming to Australia with his wife, as a refugee fleeing Hitler. David decided to do something with the money that would in some way, however big or small, begin to alleviate some of the social and economic problems of the world.

With a background in economics, specialising in the economics of developing countries, David worked for many years consulting all over the world. He also taught post-graduate studies at Boston University where a number of the students were from developing countries who were then able to return home after their studies to implement change. This economic background also led David, understandably, to feel that it is particularly important that his donations would be used efficiently and to ensure the money would get to the desired project. At the age of 35, David decided on a career change - he studied psychology and counselling to help people emotionally rather than economically. By 43, he was able to realise his dream of opening his own clinic, and provided psychological support to people in financial strain. Meanwhile, he also remained a contributor to other causes by giving grants to projects through a fund set up to deal specifically with his continued interest in social and economic injustices.

To utilise his money resourcefully and to continue to help where he could, David set up the Morawetz Social Justice Fund with assistance from the Melbourne Community Foundation, supporting various projects in Australia and abroad. Whilst open to various community development projects, David has a passion for water issues and education. Of particular interest is girls’ education due to the levels of discrimination against them and scarce opportunities for them in developing countries.

David, via the Morawetz Social Justice Fund, has supported SPW both in Australia and internationally since 2005. Some projects he has supported include ‘Clean Water, Sanitation and Health’ in India, ‘Education for Girls’ in Nepal and an ‘Income-Generating Scheme for Women’ in South Africa and Uganda, all of which have been in concurrence with SPW programmes. Recently he had the opportunity to visit some of the countries where money has been donated to see the progress and change the contribution has made. After a visit to the SPW Nepal and SPW India offices and some of the SPW communities in the Vellore and Kanchipuram districts of India, David was suitably impressed with not only the projects themselves but also the SPW staff and volunteers. David found the SPW projects to show great cost-effectiveness due to the use of volunteers and was happy to see that the programmes were able to implement and sustain a change in the communities. Of these he states:

“The community development work and capacity-building that SPW staff and volunteers do in the communities they work in is most impressive. They engage with the community, and they empower the community, as we saw during our visits”.

David has said that he looks forward to being a continuing supporter of SPW into the future after seeing the quality work being done.